Introduction:
We are given clear commandments that it is vital to our salvation to know the nature of our Heavenly Father.
“And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).
“But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23-24).
We will use this brief series of studies to question the popular view of a Trinitarian God, as is common in today’s Christianity. The only place to turn to for a proper understanding is the Bible, God’s Word. We will find that the clear teaching from the Scriptures is that God is One, and there is no other. The concept of the Trinity is both confusing, and not in agreement with God’s word.
The Catholic creed
The Catholic Church to this day regards the so-called “Athanasian Creed”, composed around the 5th century AD, as the true Christian belief, and this belief is shared by many of the other churches. In part it says (in an English Translation of the original Latin text):
And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons: nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son ; and another of the Holy Ghost… Such as the Father is, such is the Son: and such is the Holy Ghost… So the Father is God, the Son is God: and the Holy Ghost is
God. And yet they are not three Gods: but one God. And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other; none is greater, or less than another… But the whole three Persons are coeternal together: and co-equal.
Perhaps one explanation of the language is that in the Greek theater of the time it was common for an actor to appear as different “persons” simply by using different masks: indeed, this is one of the meanings of the Latin word behind our English “person”. The extent to which the original framers of the creed understood it in the term most believers in the Trinity do today is obscure: but certainly what is understood today is also obscure!
The popular view
In today’s Christian world, the Doctrine of the Trinity is held up as the litmus test of a true church. Groups that deny it are labeled heretics and cults. But the doctrine of a Triune Godhead is in disagreement with the Biblical message. The Trinitarian concept of the Godhead conflicts with the way God revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. The Trinity also was not part of the framework of the great Gospel message of the Kingdom of God proclaimed in the New Testament by Jesus and by the Apostles.
We do not find the words “Trinity” or “Triune God” in the Bible. Not once is God referred to in the Bible as consisting of three persons. Not once do we find the terms “God the Son” or “God the Holy Spirit”.
The often-repeated Trinitarian notion is that unless Jesus is God, we have no Savior. In contrast, the reality is that unless Jesus is a member of the human family, we have no assurance that human beings can be resurrected to eternal life. Proponents of the Trinity find comfort by saying that God so loved us that he became one of us. But the Bible tells us that: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that we might not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God tested Abraham to see if he was willing to give up his only begotten son Isaac. Likewise, God so loved us that He was willing to offer up His only begotten son Jesus so that we might have life.
By saying that God needed to become one of us to understand us, we are limiting His power, and it is an affront to His Majesty. He made us and He knows our frame. He is Omnipotent. This theory is an affront to His might and power.
Favorite verse
“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb 5:7-8).
Christ’s anguish and suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane as he faced the pending horror of the cross, reveals to us a situation incongruous to the idea of a Trinity. How could God the Son be in such anguish if he were the second person of the Godhead? How could one God pray to another, especially with such emotion and anguish? Such was the torment of his soul that his sweat became as great drops of blood falling down upon the ground. He prays in anguish to his Father, to the Father who could save him from death. Even hours before his death, Christ was learning. He was learning to be obedient to his Father.
(Although I am sure the Apostle had the Garden of Gethsemane in mind when he wrote the above verses, we can note that the word “days” is plural. So, this was not a single stressful incident in Christ’s life. Instead the verses tell us of our Lord’s lifetime struggle with the flesh. This is a struggle we share with him, and we look to the example he gave us of how to live our lives and deal with temptation and sin.)
The case against the Trinity
It is a New Doctrine, Developed Several Centuries after Christ
It is indisputable, and as admitted by most Trinitarian scholars, that the full development and understanding of this core Christian doctrine did not come to complete fruition until long after the death of Christ. The progressive development of the teachings that now make up the Doctrine of the Trinity can be seen in the decisions of a number of general Church Councils.
And through it all, there was an abundance of blood spilled, a profusion of wars and a scarcity of peace in the centuries of church rule over the kingdoms of men. The doctrine of the Trinity achieved its domination of Christian doctrine by force, often by brutal force. We should also remember the old adage, “The winners write the History books” when we do some of our research. All the folks who did not believe in the Trinity conveniently carried the label of “Heretic”.
“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world” (Heb 1:1-2 ESV).
This passage reinforces the Biblical teaching that Christ was begotten, that he came into being. In the Old Testament, God spoke through the prophets. But, after His Son was born, He spoke through him.
Defining the Trinity is problematic. God’s word should not be so difficult to understand.
Even ardent defenders of the Trinity often have difficulty explaining it. The complexity of three persons who are separate yet at the same time one being can be perplexing to illustrate, as attempted in the diagram above.
The Apostle Paul had no difficulty explaining the relationship between the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit: it does not have to be a mystery.
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.” (Eph 4:4-6)
“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Tim 2:5).
The Trinity is in opposition to over 3,000 years of Jewish teaching.
God chose the nation of Israel to make his name known among the nations. He delivered them from Egypt, disciplined them, sent them to Babylon and brought them back, all for His name’s sake. As He revealed himself to Israel, the great Shema (or declaration) of the Old Testament was:
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut 6:4)
God re-emphasized this point over and over:
“know therefore this day, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other” (Deut 4:39).
“And Hezeki’ah prayed before the LORD, and said: “O LORD the God of Israel, who art enthroned above the cherubim, thou art the God, thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast made heaven and earth” (1Kgs 19:15).
“I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God;….. I am the LORD, and there is no other” (Isa 45:5).
“Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together! Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the LORD? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me” (Isa 45:21).
“Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us?” (Mal 2:10).
“How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44).
The idea of ONE God is a dominant theme of the message to Israel. Monotheism separated them from the Polytheism of the nations.. God called out His people to be separate, for Israel to get away from the ideas the pagans had of deity. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had two significant differences. He was God alone (no others) and He was ruler over ALL the earth, not just the nation state of Israel.
Theologians can debate all they want about how the Scriptural record in the Old Testament uses Elohim, which is a plural word, but is invariably used in the singular when referring to the one true God1: or debate the unity implied in the word translated ‘one’ in the quote from Deut 6:42. What they cannot escape is the unquestionable fact that the Jewish understanding of these words has always been that there is only ONE GOD. Hebrew is their language and it is theirs to fully understand its true meaning. Over and over, through much repetition and the usage of many synonyms, the Old Testament record emphasized that there is only ONE God. Instead of confusion we see a host of phrases like ‘God is one’, ‘there is no other’, ‘by Myself’, ‘all alone’, ‘none except Me’, ‘none besides Me’, ’Hast not one God created us?’, ‘Thou are Lord alone’, ‘you alone are God’, etc. There is no room in the three plus millennia of Jewish teaching for a triune God. None whatsoever. And all Christian groups acknowledge that God chose the Children of Israel to be a special people through whom he made himself known to the world.
Moreover, Jesus endorsed the Jewish understanding of God. When asked by a scribe: “Which commandment is the first of all?” (Mark 12:28), Jesus expounds upon Deut 6:4–5 in his answer. The scribe wholeheartedly agrees and replies to Christ, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that He is one, and there is no other but He; and to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love ones neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 2:32-33). Notice the emphasis of the scribe when he added, “there is no other but He.” Jesus saw that he answered wisely and said to the scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” If the Trinity were true, it would be inconceivable that Jesus would let this scribe, who would have considered the Trinity a blasphemous heresy, whom he had just told was not far from the kingdom, to walk away totally in error in his basic understanding of God. The only possible conclusion we can take from these verses is that the Jewish understanding of God is correct. Jesus must have understood and believed whatever Moses believed these words to mean.
Jesus also told the Samaritan woman that the Jews understood who God was when he spoke with her by the well.
“You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:22-24).
The Samaritans had an incorrect understanding of God and of the proper way to worship Him. Unlike the Samaritans, the Jews worshiped what they knew. The Jews did have a proper understanding of God. Salvation was from the Jews. Soon everyone who would seek salvation must worship God in spirit and in truth.
Jesus agreed with the Old Testament proclamation of the only true God.
“How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44).
Jesus also had no quarrel with the teaching of the Law given by Moses.
“Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them” (Matt 5:17).
The New Testament record shows us that the Jews rejected the idea of a Trinity. In John 5 and in John 10 the Jews took up stones to kill Jesus because he had called himself the Son of God. They felt that such a claim was blasphemous and he was making himself equal to God. If the Trinity were true, Jesus should have taken these opportunities to explain to them the oneness of the Godhead. Instead, Christ takes pains both times to show them that he was not very God. He immediately says: “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever He does, that the Son does likewise” (John 5:19). He adds in vs 30 — “I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of Him who sent me.” In John 10 Christ refutes the Jewish charge of making himself God by quoting Psa 82:6 to show them they were misunderstanding what he meant when he called God his Father. What is puzzling is that, even though Christ basically tells the Jews they were wrong in their accusations in both John 5 & 10, Trinitarians seize upon the declarations made by the Jews as Truth rather than the corrections Christ gave them.
Another useful section in a similar line of faulty Trinitarian reasoning is the record of Jesus healing the paralytic man who was let down through the roof. Useful, because it ties in with this same error of using the accusation of the Jews as Truth rather than the rebuttal from Christ. In Mark 2, when Jesus heals the man, he tells him that his sins are forgiven. The Jews called this blasphemy because only God can forgive sins! Jesus asked them why they questioned what he did. To show them that the Son of man had authority on earth to forgive sins, he told the paralytic man to get up (which he did!). Trinitarians use the scribes’ statement that “only God can forgive sins” to show that Christ was indeed God. But, what they missed reading was the parallel passage in Matthew, “When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men” (Matt 9:8) Clearly, the authority came from God and the one using it was the MAN Jesus Christ.
Jesus conveyed the authority to forgive sins to his Apostles, yet no one accused them of being God because they could forgive sins.
“And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’ ” (John 20:22-23).
In the early church, one of the major problems the Apostles dealt with was the battle with the Judaisers, who wanted to go back to the Law. The Judaisers complained about food offered to idols, circumcision, eating food containing blood, and associating with Gentiles. If these physical matters were considered worthy of hot debate, how much more explosive to the new Jewish converts would be the idea of a three person Godhead? Yet, despite all the problems in the early church, the record is silent about the most explosive doctrinal change possible to the Jewish world, if tue. Introducing the idea of the Trinity to a Jewish world would be like lighting a match in a gunpowder factory. The absolute silence of any sort of battle between Jews and Christians over the Trinity speaks volumes.
Lastly, Peter was given a magnificent opportunity to give us his belief in Christ’s identity. Jesus asked the disciples: “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:15). Christ endorsed that understanding. Peter’s confession is simple and clear. Christ was the Son of God, not God the Son.
The point of this section is that Christianity has elevated the belief of the Trinity as an absolute necessity for salvation. Consequently, since the Hebrews have never believed in a Trinity, shouldn’t they all be lost? Yet clearly, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Samuel, Samson, Barak, Deborah, Gideon, and a great host of others will be present in God’s kingdom.
- In Gen 1:26, “And God [Elohim] said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”, the “God” is singular. The normal explanation is that “us” refers to the angels. Other uses of Elohim (god) in the plural refer to pagan gods.
- This passage “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” is one of the four passages the Jews write on their phylacteries: see Mark 2:29 “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One